I had a good show recently. Maybe even a great show.
I’m talking a 4.5 out of 5. Or a 9 out of 10.
The kind of show where everything connects. Where even the lines that aren’t funny get laughs and even the moments that aren’t amazing get gasps.
A good show is like a hard reset. Three rough days in a row can be instantly forgotten after a great performance.
A good show negates negativity and changes my entire outlook. A good show means I can keep going because I must be getting better. A good show means that, every one in a while, I’m good enough to share something special with a roomful of strangers. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to do it again.
Good shows are the goal but bad shows are how you get good. I rarely learn from a good performance because autopilot kicks in and carries me to the finale. The best performances I’ve ever had are a blur but I can tell you every detail of my worst shows. They’re too painful to forget.
A good show is like a carrot, dangling on a stick. It’s a mirage at the end of the highway - just out of reach, just around the corner.
A good show is an unexplainable, unattainable goal. The better you get, the better the show must be. The more you learn, the more you have to learn.
Yet every now and then, I surpass what I know. I reach a level of transcendence that I never knew existed. My skills and words align in an unforeseeable symbiotic relationship.
That’s what happened the other night - under the lights, onstage, in front of a hundred people I’ve never met.
I had an in-the-moment-firing-on-all-cylinders-out-of-body-experience downstage center. And for an hour I forgot about that cup of coffee I spilled before the show and the conference call I’m doing tomorrow.
For an instant, I was better than I knew I could be. I was better than I’ve ever been.
In that moment, I was good. Maybe even great.